VacationSelector

Riga or Washington DC?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Riga
53
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

RigaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Riga leads by 22 points.22
RigaWashington DC
Score4018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km571
Coast distance12 km34 km
Water distance12 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
RigaWashington DC
Score5977
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4701,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3336
Museums & heritage. Riga leads by 6 points.6
RigaWashington DC
Score6155
Museums within 10 km6983
Museums within 2 km of centre4755
Share of museums within 2 km %6866
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
RigaWashington DC
Score5161
Drinking venues within 4 km5841,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre456593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7858
Nightclubs within 4 km5454
Nature & day trips. Riga leads by 2 points.2
RigaWashington DC
Score4442
Protected land share 50 km %1010
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7394
Park area within 2 km68 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
RigaWashington DC
Score3538
Tourist attractions within 2 km77
Park area within 2 km68 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 14 points.14
RigaWashington DC
Score6276
Notable places within 2 km137305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Riga leads by 33 points.33
RigaWashington DC
Score7643
Price level global53.7100
Daily budget€132
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
RigaWashington DC
Score5262
Monthly daytime high-0.1 °C to 23.5 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 87 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Riga
0
0
4
12
17
21
24
22
17
11
5
1
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Riga
2
1
1
3
9
14
18
19
16
11
8
5
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Riga
43
40
35
33
52
69
87
78
65
82
58
50
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Riga
8
9
12
14
17
18
17
15
13
10
8
7
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Riga: 1991-2020 normals, Riga (4.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromRigaWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 0 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
1 h 30 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 15 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 40 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 50 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DublinDUB
2 h 55 m
no fares
RIX · 9 km
7 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureRigaWashington DC
Official languageLatvian
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation6 m72 m
Main airportRiga International Airport (RIX)9 km from centre101 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days

By the numbers

MeasureRigaWashington DC
City population588,911689,545
People per km²3,896
Museums within 10 km1299
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5582
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Riga or Washington DC somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.